Biostar Hi-Fi Z77X Motherboard

On-Board Peripherals

The Intel Z77 chipset is a single-chip solution that is also known as a PCH (Platform Controller Hub). This chip supports two SATA-600 ports and four SATA-300 ports, supporting RAID (0, 1, 10, and 5). This motherboard doesn’t bring any additional SATA controllers.

All SATA ports are located at the motherboard’s edge and rotated 90°, so video cards won’t block them. See Figure 4. Unfortunately, the manufacturer used the same color for all ports, making it difficult to identify which ports are SATA-600 and which are SATA-300. The two left-most ports are SATA-600.

Figure 4: SATA ports

There are no eSATA ports on this motherboard.

The Intel Z77 chipset supports 14 USB 2.0 ports and four USB 3.0 ports. The Biostar Hi-Fi Z77X offers eight USB 2.0 ports, four soldered on the motherboard rear panel and four through two headers located on the motherboard; and four USB 3.0 ports, two soldered on the motherboard rear panel and two available through a header located near the second PCI Express x16 slot.

The Biostar Hi-Fi Z77X doesn’t have FireWire ports.

The highlight of this motherboard is its audio section, which we will talk about on the next page.

The portrayed motherboard has one Gigabit Ethernet port controlled by a Realtek RTL8111F chip.

Gabriel Torres is a Brazilian best-selling ICT expert, with 24 books published. He started his online career in 1996, when he launched Clube do Hardware, which is one of the oldest and largest websites about technology in Brazil. He created Hardware Secrets in 1999 to expand his knowledge outside his home country.